Environmental issues and international relations · Environmental issues and international relations ... environmental policy until 2020, and sets out a vision of where the EU should

Environmental issues and international

relations

UNICOLLEGE MANTOVA A.A. 2017/2018

STORIA DEI TRATTATI E DELLE RELAZIONI INTERNAZIONALI

Prof.ssa ISABELLA QUERCI, Ph.D.

11 May 2018

Definition of environment

• The surrounding or condition in which a person, an animal or a lives and operate;

• The natural world as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity;

Definition of sustainability

• The ability to maintain a certain rate or level;

• Avoidance of the deplation of natural resources in order to:

• - maintain ecological balance;

• - ensure the same resources to people elsewhere

• - ensure access to the same resources to disadvantaged people

• Ensure access to the same resources to future generations

Sustainable development

• Economic development that is conducted iwthout depletion of natural resources

• Organizational principle for meeting human development goals while at the same time sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide natural resources and ecosystem services upon which the economy and society depend.

Adaptation and resilience

• Today, the "human face" of environmental damages is visible to the world through the many people that suffer its consequences, such as sea-level rise, droughts, cyclones, and tsunamis.

• Adaptation, when it comes to people, is understood as "the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities.“

• Resilience: capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Human activities hamper such resilience (deforestation, reduction of biodiversity, land use, waste)

Environment and IR

• Water wars, drug wars, diamond wars, oil wars—given the proliferation of resource wars in an era of scarcity—climate change, deforestation or pollution are now widely used expressions in international relations

• The environment, in general, and natural resources, in particular, are deeply linked with security, which is one of the most controversial concepts of international politics

• Environmental issues are now framed in the security concept, because traditional notions of security, focused on military security, lack relevance in a world of transnational phenomena capable of affecting a wide variety of human referent objects

Main international law instruments

• Stockholm Declaration on the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (16 June 1972): right to a healthy environment. Nations agree to accept responsibility for any environmental effect caused by their action.

• Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (14 June 1992) : 27 principles intended at guiding States in future sustainable development. Formulation of the polluter pays principle and the precautionary approach.

• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (adopted 9 May 1992, entered into force 21 March 1994): stabilize GHG concentrations in the atmosphere in order to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

What the EU does

• The EU has some of the world’s highest environmental standards, which protect nature, green the economy and achieve careful and rational use of natural resources.

• Environmental challenges know no boundaries.

• Environment policy can play a key role in creating jobs and stimulating investment. Green innovations can be implemented and exported, making Europe more competitive and improving people’s quality of life.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T28MW67OSDI

What the EU does

The 7th EU environment action programme guides the Union’s environmental policy until 2020, and sets out a vision of where the EU should be by 2050. This includes living in an environment where nothing is wasted, natural resources are managed sustainably and biodiversity is protected, valued and restored.

The programme concentrates action in three key areas:

• protecting, conserving and enhancing the EU’s natural capital;

• turning the EU into a resource-efficient, green and competitive low-carbon economy; and

• safeguarding EU citizens from environment-related pressures and risks to health and wellbeing.

Climate change

• Change in statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time.

• It is attributable to solar radiation; plate tectonics; volcano eruptions but….

• It is to a larger extent product of human activities and directly linked to increased emissions of greenhouse gases (“GHG”), capable of warming the Earth’s atmosphere up.

• Greenhouse effect is the process by which radiation, from a planet’s atmosphere, warms the planet’s surface to a temperature above what it would be without its atmosphere.

Observed climate change

• Global warming

• Sea level rise

• Change in weather conditions

• Mass estinctions

International law insutrments

• Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (adopted 11 December 1997, entered into force 16 February 2005)

• In the Paris Agreement states agreed to keep average global temperature increases below 2 degrees, with the aim of keeping increases within 1.5 degrees. They also laid out a clear process to reach this goal: every five years they will submit more ambitious plans laying out how they will reduce their greenhouse emissions.

• Protocollo di Milano sull’Alimentazione e la Nutrizione – 31 dicembre 2015

What the EU does

The EU is working hard to cut greenhouse emissions, encourage other major polluters to take stronger action and address unavoidable consequences of climate change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nMVZWtcFHw

EU action on climate change seeks to address changes to the Earth’s climate, in particular the rise in global temperatures due to an increase in greenhouse gases caused by human activity. Higher temperatures have many consequences, such as flooding or droughts in areas previously immune to such threats and extreme weather events that jeopardise food production, especially in poorer countries. Water and food shortages can trigger famine, regional conflicts and mass migration, while many plant and animal species are also at risk of extinction

Environmental conflict

• Conflict is an empirical phenomenon that can be observed, while the concept of insecurity is subjective and socially driven.

• Many have defined an ‘environmental conflict’ as one resulting from degradation caused by human activity or mismanagement, rather than the finite nature of the resources exploited

«Effetto serra, effetto guerra»

• Violence derived from environmental problems involves exploitation, discrimination, unequal social and economic structures

• Climate related conflicts

• Climate related migrations

• Climate change, poverty and human rights are intrinsically associated